Reanna & Dustin

Reanna and Dustin stopped by Saturday morning for an engagement photo shoot. Reanna's Mother and Diane are cousins. Reanna's family is in the Cleveland area, and Dustin's family are in the Akron area. Reanna and Dustin are currently living in New Jersey where he is stationed for the U.S. Coast Guard. They are planning to marry in May, 2008.




It is nice to have some Tribe fans in New Jersey.


We reluctantly let them bring their puppy with them for the photo shoot. We have a "no pets" policy in our house due to the fact that Diane is alergic and I am not a pet person. The puppy was small enough that they didn't need to set him down.



Apparently, the grueling 1/2 hour photoshoot was taking a toll on the puppy.

Best of luck Reanna and Dustin!

Love,
Mark and Diane

Happy Thanksgiving

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. This is a quick look out the back door of our home today.

It is a special gift for my good friend Brittany since she doesn't see too many snowy Holidays in Nashville.

Shooting a Princess

Photographer Melissa Koehler

I have an e-mail buddy who is a fellow photographer. Her name is Melissa Koehler and she is a photographer in San Diego. Melissa put out a challenge to other photographers to find a magazine picture they are inspired by and duplicate the shot. I spent a week looking through various magazines (InStyle, Rangefinder, Professional Photographer, etc.) and could not find anything that really spoke to me.

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As my wife and I were killing time at the airport waiting to board our plane for our vacation, I went to look at magazines and the image below jumped out at me.




The stunningly beautiful image of Princess Grace on the cover of life magazine taken by her personal photographer Howell Conant.


I knew I could probably pull off something similar to this, so I e-mailed my favorite model Kat and told her my ideas. As usual, Kat was all for showing up to model for my project... and I think she was happy she wasn't going to be waist deep in cold water. While I wanted to pay tribute to the original, it wasn't possible to duplicate it since Kat didn't have the same dress or the same hair style. I set the shot up and let Kat's beauty provide the rest.

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I hope you enjoy my tribute. Thanks for the great project idea Missi!

A day in the park with the Zelis Family

Back in October, I had a great shoot in the park with the Zelis family. This is the second time I had the honor of shooting pictures of the three lovely ladies of the family.







A few of Mom & Dad by themselves...

11 Grandkids... before and after

Working with young kids, it is really tough to get their attention and to get them to all look forward and smile at the same time. Now, when the number of kids goes to 11 and a few of them are infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers, it is even more of a challenge.

In August I did a photoshoot of 11 children for their grandparents. Unfortunately, it was raining out on the day of the shoot, so we had to use my studio. The goal was to get them to look forward and smile - nothing fancy. When I do a shoot like this, I shoot at least 10 pictures in a row (just in case someone is blinking, not paying attention, etc).

Out of many shots, this shot was determined by their mothers to be the best.

Although it was not awful, we had one girl blinking, a baby about to start crying, a few kids checking out my ceiling, etc. Through the magic of Photoshop (and many of the other pictures I shot) I was able to replace 7 of the kid's heads with their heads from different images. Below is a result:



I think it makes a big difference. By the way, Grandma and Grandpa loved it.

The Late Fall

Here it is November 9th and the trees still have a lot of leaves in them and are still retaining some beautiful color. Although the frost and the cold temperatures have killed all of the flowers, the trees still seem to be hanging in. Here is a picture of the tub, cold and lonely, waiting for spring.

Wrapping it up in New England

On Friday, our first stop was in Providence, Rhode Island. We looked up the house below. This home used to be owned by Diane's Great Aunt Dinah. Diane's mother and her Aunt Kay used to visit this house during the summers when they were growing up. The house is huge - the upper floors are apartments now and the basement level is an eye examination office.


Then we drove over to Newport, Rhode Island to tour some of the magnificent mansions. This one below is "The Breakers" which was owned by the Vanderbuilt family. (Note: none of the mansions allow photos taken inside of them)


The light in the sky was just right when I took this shot in the backyard.


The mansion below is "Rosecliff". The flowers had just been removed from the dirt mounds for the winter. This place has a huge ballroom in it. If you saw the movie "True Lies", then you saw Arnold Schwarznegger dance the tango in the ballroom. "The Great Gatsby" was also filmed here. Our tour guide let us know that Katherine Heigl from "Gray's Anatomy" has just filmed a movie here that will be coming out next year.


One thing I noticed about these mansions... the rich people loved statues with bare boobies and buttocks.


This might be a private residence... not sure. I took this shot from the sidewalk.


This mansion was called "Marble House"


The "Elms".


All of these mansions have these magnificent huge old trees that are beautiful.


On our last night of vacation we were back in our hotel room in Fall River, Mass. I shot this picture out our hotel window. This picture is straight out of the camera with no color enhancement.


Saturday morning we woke up to rain from hurricane Noel that was coming up the Atlantic Coast. Since there wasn't much we could do in the rain, we drove up to New Hampshire to tour an Anheuser-Busch facility. By the way, as I mentioned a few days ago, New Hampshire has the state motto "Live Free or Die". I think that is a little harsh and outdated. My suggestion is they change the motto to "Live Free or Don't".


At the end of the tour, I was able to sample 5 different beers that are brewed in this facility. After that, I drank a Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale that is one of the seasonal A-B beers. Below is me "Living Free" with Angela who was our wonderful tour guide.

Greetings from Massachusetts

On October 30th, we spent some of the day in Salem, Mass. Our first stop was the famous "House of Seven Gables". We had a great tour guide and walked through the house (no pictures allowed inside).


Then we checked out some of the "Salem Witch Trials" museums and historical places. Our next stop was the "Salem Witch Museum."


Diane was upset that we would not be in Salem on Halloween night. "Die You Zombie Bastards" sounded like a "can't miss" flick.


After Salem, we drove to Cape Cod. We stayed in Hyannis (home of the Kennedy compound). For Halloween we decided to take a cruise over to Martha's Vineyard. I shot these next two shots from the high speed ferry.


On Martha's Vineyard, we took a 2 1/2 hour bus tour that showed us most of the island. I didn't take pictures through the bus window, but here are two shots of one of the Martha's Vineyard lighthouses.



On our cruise back to Cape Cod, I took this picture for my Sister-in-law Alice Ann.

Before leaving Cape Cod, we spent the morning driving around seeing different sights and more light houses.



This afternoon we drove to Fall River, Mass - the home of the infamous Lizzie Borden.

"Lizzie Borden with an axe gave her father forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done, she gave her mother fourty one."

Below is the Lizzie Borden house where the axe murders took place. It is now a museum and a bed and breakfast.



We toured the home. Where this couch is now is the spot where Lizzie's father was whacked.


After the tour, we went to the town graveyard to see the families burial site.


Diane got this shot of me and Lizzie.


Friday we are off to Newport, Rhode Island to tour some mansions.